Foresight

by Graham Storrs

  “Tell me how you got on with Olivia this afternoon,” he said, pushing the idea aside. “Did you make any progress?”

  Her mouth opened in surprise, then a hint of mischief appeared about her eyes. “We had a long chat about Sandra Malone,” she said, watching him. “She sounds like an extraordinary woman. Tell me about her.”

  “She ... er ... What?” He frowned, irritated with himself for being so easily thrown off-balance. “Well, there’s nothing to tell. She’s just someone I knew a long time ago.”

  “Someone who was in Washington with you when AR2 started.”

  AR2 was what the media had taken to calling the long-running war in the U.S.. “Olivia talks too much.”

  “And you barely talk at all—except about work. Olivia says you rushed over to the States to save the fair Sandra like a knight of old rescuing a beautiful princess.”

  “It wasn’t like that. Can we get back to why we’re here?” Jay felt hypocritical saying it. When Laura had told him she was having dinner with Olivia at her hotel and asked if he’d like to join them, he’d said yes straight away. He was exhausted after a sleepless night and a stressful day and he’d thought only about how pleasant it would be to have dinner with Laura. And now he was playing the grumpy, work-obsessed boss, trying to shut down the conversation.

  “I don’t want to talk about Sandra,” he said. At least that was honest.

  She eyed him speculatively. “I don’t really want to talk about her either. I really just wanted you to open up. We’ve worked together for a long time now but I don’t actually know anything about you. Would it not be nicer if we were friends? I sometimes look at you and think you need a friend. Someone close.”

  Jay opened his mouth to speak but had no idea what to say. The moment was a precipice. Say one thing and he might step over into the dizzy, thrilling tumble of a relationship with this woman. Say another and he could step back onto the safe, level ground of his lonely life. He drew a breath, not yet knowing which way the world would turn.

  “Hello, you two. I hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long.”

  Jay looked up at Olivia as she bustled about taking a seat and let out his breath, leaning back in his chair. Laura too, he noticed, leaned back.

  “We were just chatting,” he said. “Laura was about to fill me in on what you two came up with to explain last night.”

  “Ha!” Olivia exclaimed. “That won’t take long.” She started off on a rambling excursion through the improbable scenarios they had explored and the scant evidence they had collected.

  Jay turned as casually as he could to look at Laura and found her studying him, deep in thought.

  Chapter 11: Convergence

  Jay had told him not to worry about costs, that he’d sign off on anything he felt he needed. So Fourget took one of the department’s private planes and hired a fast car when he reached Heathrow. On the way, he had the techs trace Sandra Malone’s commplant and spent some time studying her file and re-reading Jay’s. Of course, Jay’s file was restricted but that had never stopped him in the past. He had learned early in his career that the more you knew about what you were up against and who you were working with, the longer you survived.

  At twenty-eight, the lieutenant had seen plenty of action, at first as an infantryman in the EDF’s endless border wars with the Middle East and the former Russian Republic, and later as a commando in special operations farther afield. He had distinguished himself in every role he’d been given and EDF MI had rewarded him with his current job in K Section—Temporal Counter-Terrorism. He was military to the core and hated the EDF MI practice of using civilian management in some of its more sensitive sections, but Jay Kennedy was all right. Jay was ex-MI5 and had seen plenty of action in Europol’s Temporal Crimes Unit. He’d also been instrumental in saving Berlin and London from devastating timesplashes and, in Washington, had shown the kind of courage under fire that only someone who had been in similar situations himself could appreciate.

  If Jay Kennedy had been in the military, he would have had a chest full of medals by now.

  The London streets were more of a mess than those he had left behind in Berlin. The English didn’t have the same efficiency and pride in their work as their German cousins. Many streets were still designated non-auto and he had to drive or endure major detours. Fortunately the M25 had been cleared and, once he reached that, he could let the car drive itself and get back to his studies.

  Sandra Malone was an interesting character. Despite what Jay had said about her having potentially useful information, Fourget had suspected this mission was based on purely personal motives. The photos and video of her in the file added to his cynicism. The woman looked and moved like a supermodel. She was outrageously beautiful. It would be easy to imagine a quiet, socially awkward man like Jay Kennedy being hopelessly, idiotically infatuated with such a woman. However, now that he’d learned more, he wasn’t so sure.

  Malone was way more than just a pretty face. She had degrees in physics and temporal engineering and had worked as a teknik, building long-range displacement rigs for a British university—until some crazy in the U.S. had kidnapped her to help build the rig that destroyed Washington. Since then she’d had a few menial jobs—either lying low or establishing a cover, he guessed. She’d saved Jay’s life once in Berlin, and had been on the timesplash with him that had saved London. Orphaned early, a splashparty girl from the age of fourteen, she had been the bitch of one, if not two, of Europe’s leading bricks back in the day.

  So, intelligent, beautiful, and with a taste for psychopathic men. She also had a black belt, eighth dan, in Shotokan karate. Used to compete for her university karate club. He would never have guessed it to look at her. And there was another surprise. She had a daughter, Cara.

  He wondered where the daughter was now and if she was involved somehow. He pulled up the file. A psychology student. Also tall and beautiful—although nowhere near as stunning as her mother. Her file was thin. It did contain two other surprises that set Fourget rubbing his chin. The first was that Cara’s father was Jason Kennedy. Having a daughter was something his boss had never mentioned once in the two years he had known him—probably not to anybody, since the gossip would have reached him if anyone else at the office knew. The second was that Cara Malone had also been in Washington with her parents, although she had been just fifteen at the time. The Malone women clearly started their lives of adventure and danger early.

  He made a note of Cara’s netID and home address and closed the files. It may or may not be important to know about Jay’s secret daughter but Fourget liked to set up the future so that the dice fell his way as often as possible.

  ***

  The hire car rolled up outside her gran’s house and called her to say it had arrived.

  “I don’t know, Cara,” Dot said. “Your mum should be here by now. I don’t like it that I can’t call her.”

  Cara bent down and kissed her cheek. “Oh, the comms are down all over still. She’ll call when she can.” She tried one more time to put the old woman’s mind at rest. “Mum knows about the party. It’s all arranged. She knows I don’t get to see my friends in London very often. She’s fine with it, honest.”

  Her grandmother sighed. “Maybe I should call Jay?”

  Cara put on a smile. “Yes, you should. I'm sure he'll be fine.” She could imagine her father's reaction when he heard she'd gone off on her own. He'd go through the roof. Well it would serve him right. Maybe he'd do something about it then instead of just sitting around in his office … doing whatever the hell he was doing. “I think he’s a bit busy at the moment. Look, the car’s arrived. I’d better get going.”

  “Does your mother know you go out dressed like that?”

  “Like what?” She’d had to dress up a bit to match her cover story, which was a pain, but she’d kept it as low-key as possible, and wore nothing she couldn’t climb a wall in.

  Her grandma shook her head. “Never mind. You know, I
can still remember the very first day I saw your mum. She was even younger than you are and she had on just a simple summer dress, but she looked like she’d just walked off the page of a fashion magazine. I was so pleased for Jay, and so worried that she’d break his heart. She was so … out of his league, I suppose.”

  Cara was acutely aware of the seconds ticking by, but she said, “She’s not, you know. She still loves him. She’s never loved anyone else.”

  “Then why aren’t they …?” But they both knew the answer to that. “Oh, never mind. You have a lovely evening, and try not to get home too late.”

  Cara gave her a smile. “I’ll try.”

  The hire car was a little, underpowered affair but there was no chance of driving fast with the roads the way they were anyway, so that didn’t bother her. She gave it the address of Clarke Engineering and let it take her at its best speed. On the way, she called Dominic again. A transparent display of his face appeared on the inside of her windscreen.

  “Any news?”

  “News?”

  “Dom, I’m trusting you to keep track of my mum’s commplant signal. You’re doing that, aren’t you?”

  “I thought—”

  “Dom! I need to know where she is. I’m in a car heading for that place now. I don’t want to get there and find she’s moved on.”

  “Hang on.” There was a thirty-second silence as he looked through her to the other elements open on his display. “No. She’s still there. Hasn’t left for a moment.”

  Cara absorbed the news. “What is that place, Dom? What do they do there?”

  This time her friend was on the ball. “Light engineering. They fabricate machine parts for small robots and the like. They supply factories. You know the kind of thing—a shed full of industrial fabbers printing out bearings and cams. They’re part of the HiQua group. You know that mega corp that makes all kind of shit?”

  “HiQua? You’re sure?”

  “I’m looking at their corporate structure right now.”

  “Bugger.”

  “What’s up?”

  “It’s the company my mother works for.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Cara had no idea at all. It might mean the whole thing was completely innocent and she was getting as paranoid as her mother, chasing around in the night, seeing dangers everywhere.

  “Why would a light engineering company have a commplant suppressor installed, Dom?”

  “I dunno. They put them in at concert halls and such so that people don’t start yakking in the middle of the show.”

  “Not helpful.”

  “Some places have them so that their staff don’t make social calls or play online games during work hours.”

  “They don’t do that where Mum works. I call her all the time.”

  Dominic shrugged.

  “Do you have a floor plan?”

  “I’ve got the usual satellite images.”

  “Yeah, I’ve got those. I need floor plans.”

  Dominic squirmed as if he was fighting the urge to run. “I suppose I could dig around for plans—maybe at the local planning department or something but that would be—”

  “Illegal. Yeah. But this is important, Dom. Really, really important.”

  He hesitated more than she liked to see. “OK. I’ll take a look, but if I get busted I’m saying you hypnotised me or something.”

  “You’re an angel.”

  “Yeah.”

  She hung up and watched the streets roll by. She tried calling Jay but all she got was his answering service. She didn't leave a message. With a heavy sigh, she slumped down into her seat. She supposed she’d better start thinking about what to do when she got there.

  ***

  Farid Hamiye left Sandra tied up in one of Hong’s storerooms and went off to the little kitchen to get himself a coffee. He was not a happy man.

  He didn’t like one single thing about this situation. He didn’t like having a British secret service officer tied up in a storeroom. He didn’t like the way Lee was so casually intent on having her killed. He didn’t like that Dr Hong had gone into a funk, or that the technical staff were standing around in small groups muttering. He especially didn’t like the way his prisoner’s eyes followed him around, like some kind of predator waiting for a chance to jump him and tear his throat out.

  It was all very well for Lee to tell him to hold the woman there for four days, but if anyone wanted to know where she was, it would be child’s play to find out. He needed to move her as soon as possible. Which gave him another thought. If someone did come looking for the woman—and the chances were good—he didn’t have a hope of protecting the place on his own.

  So he made some calls to set things up as soon as Lee flew off in the helicopter. He’d much rather have got in a plane and flown away himself, but, if he could just keep this thing together for four more days, he’d have enough money that he would never need to work for men like Lee again.

  There were two technicians talking quietly in Mandarin when he entered the kitchen. They shut up as soon as they saw him, and left the room. It seemed pretty clear to him that Hong’s people were psyching themselves up to walk out on the job.

  An odd thought struck him. Why was the whole special projects team Chinese? It had never occurred to him to wonder before, taking it as read that Lee and Hong would hire people they knew and trusted. Now, suddenly, it seemed sinister.

  His phone chirruped and he took the call. “Mr Hamiye, we’re approaching the factory.”

  “Good. There’s a delivery dock on the west side of the building. Park there and wait. I’ll be out in a moment. And be discreet.”

  “Of course.”

  He grabbed a chocolate bar and a can of something fizzy and headed for the side exit. A large black van was pulling in as he left the building. His own car was parked nearby. The van sat quietly, its engine off. He crossed to it and a man emerged.

  He was a giant, tall enough and broad enough to make Hamiye look slight beside him. He wore combat pants and a black singlet under a lightweight bulletproof vest. His bare arms were massive trunks of knotted muscle, his neck a sinewy column on which sat a head that seemed carved from granite. A submachine gun hung on a clip at his hip. It looked like a toy beside his beefy hand. From his size-fourteen army boots to his close-cropped blond hair, everything about the man said do not fuck with me.

  “You must be Langbroek,” Hamiye said. He didn’t offer a hand.

  The man-mountain gave a nod. “You Hamiye?”

  “Yes, I am. Let’s see the rest of your team.”

  Langbroek slapped the side of the van and the door slid open. Four more giants in combat gear climbed out. One of them was a woman but she was hardly less heavily muscled than her male companions. They eyed Hamiye with steady scowls that seemed to have been chiselled onto their stone faces. All part of the theatre, Hamiye thought. The muscles, the clothes, the weapons, even the bandanna the woman wore, were all part of the show these guys put on to scare away the fainthearted. Not that they weren’t tough sons of bitches. Hormone cocktails, gene work and surgery were just the beginning for these guys. They probably also had carbon-fibre-reinforced bones, amped-up metabolisms and, just for good measure, enough amphetamines in their system to outrun a racehorse.

  “This is the mission,” he said, turning back to Langbroek. “This building is quarantined. No-one gets in and no-one gets out for the next four days. It’s an easy job and I don’t expect any trouble. The people inside are just scientists and technicians. There shouldn’t be any visitors. There are only two entrances and all the windows are barred. I want this to be low profile but, if there’s trouble, I need you to handle it, quickly and efficiently. Just keep the place locked down for four days. I’ll be on this netID if you need a decision on anything.” He touched Langbroek’s arm and transferred the data. The man’s bare skin was hot despite the freezing weather. “I’ll be back at the end of four days and it’s all over. Any questions?
”

  Langbroek took his time thinking about it. “When you say quarantine—”

  “I don’t mean there’s any disease outbreak. It’s nothing like that. The work going on in there is top secret. We’re in the final phase of it and I don’t want news leaking because some disgruntled worker decides to talk to the press or whatever.”

  Again Langbroek pondered. “Is it legal, what you’re doing in there?”

  “Does it matter?”

  The giant pursed his lips and shook his head.

  “If the cops come sniffing and they don't have a warrant, refer them to me. If they do, call me and stand by. OK? I need you to help me organize a couple of things and then the place is all yours.”

  Hamiye led the giant through the building, past shocked and gaping technicians, to Dr Hong’s office. There he explained, with two hundred kilos of scowling muscle at his elbow, that Hong and his team were not to leave the building for any reason. The old man blustered and threatened him with Lee, then with Waxtead, then with a refusal to work.

  Hamiye let him sound off for a while then said, “Doctor, the only way you will ever leave this building alive is to complete the project. On schedule. Now, it’s just four days and no-one was going to get any sleep in that time anyway, were they? So it’s hardly a big deal. I’ll send in some camp-beds tomorrow. You can call Lee by all means. He will tell you to stop making a fuss and get on with the job. If you call Waxtead, I will have Mr Langbroek break your legs. Do you understand me?”

  Hong regarded Langbroek with wide-eyed horror. He swallowed hard and nodded.

  “Excellent. I’ll leave you to explain it to the staff.” He left and Langbroek followed him.